J.M.J.

Author's note: Thanks for continuing to read and especially for any and all reviews! One more chapter to go of finishing the climax and wrapping things up.

Chapter XVI

Rescue Mission

Officer Brady didn't put up too much of an argument when George and Ned insisted on coming along to the address Hadley had given as the place where she had been held hostage. A battalion of other officers would meet them there, and they would storm the place if need be. Being the closest ones to the scene, Brady and his two passengers arrived first.

It was an ordinary, one-story house with a garage and a front door set well back in an alcove. The garage door was closed, cutting off any escape in that direction. However, there was probably a back door, and there were certainly windows that anyone in the house might use to escape if they were desperate enough.

George was impatient to go inside, with or without backup. "Who knows what they could be doing to Bess right this instant? It would be horrible if we arrived even a minute too late."

"It would also be horrible if we got ourselves all killed," Brady replied. "Just hold on. The backup will be here any minute." Though the words themselves were calm, it was obvious from Brady's tone that he was impatient and nervous himself.

A minute ticked by slowly without any backup putting in an appearance, then another three or four. George was about to repeat her request to charge right in when something caught the attention of all three watchers. A girl who looked as if she was still in high school came down the street, looking all around her as if she was nervous and suspected someone might be watching her. Then she went to the door and knocked.

There was a pause, and then finally the door opened. Whoever was on the other side didn't let the girl in nor did he or she open the door wide enough to be seen. Officer Brady rolled his window down in hopes of overhearing the conversation, but both parties were speaking in much too low tones to be heard.

"I could try sneaking closer," George offered in a whisper.

"No," Brady told her. "If you accidentally alert them that we're watching them, you'll only hurt our chances of getting to Bess. Just hold on. Backup should be here any second."

The conversation between the girl and the person in the house only lasted a few seconds longer, but still there was no sign of the backup arriving. Finally, the girl shrugged and started walking away. The door closed immediately. As it happened, the girl walked directly toward the parked patrol car. As she started past, she gave it a casual glance, but she didn't change her pace.

"Excuse me, miss," Officer Brady called out his window, making a quick decision to take the chance. "Could I talk to you for a second?"

The girl stopped and looked at him for a moment, confusion but not fear evident in her face. "Uh, okay. Why?"

"I noticed that you stopped at that house over there." Brady pointed it out. "I'd just like to ask you some questions about it."

"There's nothing wrong with that house," the girl insisted immediately. "You must have the wrong place if you're doing a stake-out of it."

"I don't think so," Brady replied. "I'm Officer Brady. What's your name?"

"Mandy Gillespie," the girl said, a little uncertainly. "What do you think is going on in that house? It's nothing. That's just my boss's house."

"What's your boss's name?" Brady asked.

"Clark Ransen." Mandy hesitated. "This isn't about the sabotage to the Winter Festival, is it?"

"Do you know something about it?" Brady countered.

"Well, no, not really," Mandy admitted. "It's just…It's not really even a police matter, I'm sure."

"Why don't you tell me about it, anyway?" Brady requested.

Mandy peered into the back seat and noticed Ned and George. "Who are these two? They're not cops."

"I'm Ned," Ned told her. "Mandy. Aren't you the girl who works in Maintenance? Our friends, Bess and Dave, told us about you."

"Oh, are you more friends of Nancy Drew?" Mandy asked. She took a deep breath was she hesitated. "There must be more going on than I realized. Well, I guess I'd better tell you what I do know, even though it's not very much."

"Go ahead and get in the car," Officer Brady told her, opening the passenger door for her. "We don't want anyone to see you talking to us."

Mandy climbed in and put her hands up against the heater in the car's dashboard. "That feels much better, anyway. Okay, so, my boss, Clark, is the head of Maintenance for the college, obviously. I found out that he's actually helping the guy that's been doing the sabotage."

"What guy is that?" George broke in.

"I don't know. Just some guy. I've never seen him, and I don't know his name. Anyway, Maintenance has someone on duty seven days a week, which I hate, but that's not important right now. I was on duty yesterday evening, and so was Clark. I got to work almost half an hour early, just 'cause. I walk into the office without knocking, because, ya know, why would you knock? Clark's right in the middle of a phone call, saying he'll have the lights ready to go off just at the right time. So, obviously, I'm all like 'What?' and Clark's all like 'Oh, uh, I gotta go' to the person on the phone, and then he tries to tell me that that wasn't anything just something unrelated to work, and I'm not buying it, so finally he sees that there's no point lying, so he admits it that he's helping with the sabotage but it's not a big deal, it's just a joke, and I'm not going to tell anyone and make him lose his job, right? I agreed, but I couldn't get to sleep last night thinking about it, so finally I came over here to talk to him about it. He said the same thing: it's no big deal and I should just forget it."

Just then, another police car pulled up behind Brady's, and two officers got out of it. They told him that there were other units around the block, and so they were ready to go in.

"Wow. Clark really is in trouble, isn't he?" Mandy asked. "Can I stay here and watch?"

"I think you'd better," Officer Brady replied. "We might have some more questions for you. Ned, George, you stay here with her. We'll call you once it's safe to come in."

George opened her mouth to protest, but then she closed it again. Holding things up wouldn't help Bess, she realized, and the police would be better able to handle things than she would. Even so, she was on the edge of the seat as she watched the police approach the house.

Ned was also tense, but he showed it far less. He sat back in the seat and thought over what they had just learned. "Mandy," he asked suddenly, "how do you know it was a guy that Clark is working with if you never saw him and just heard a tiny bit of one phone conversation?"

Mandy paused. "I'm not completely sure. It's just the impression I got. Maybe Clark said 'he' and 'him'. That must be it. I know he didn't say 'she' or 'her'."

That answered that question, so Ned settled back into thinking. Meanwhile, the officers had reached the door and knocked on it. There was no answer, but the watchers in the car could hear what was happening over the radio in the car. When the police had identified themselves, the suspect had tried to flee out the back way. The officers who were waiting in the backyard took off in pursuit of him. The next thing that came over the radio was Officer Brady informing Ned, George, and Mandy that the suspect had been captured and it was safe for them to enter the house. George practically flew across the street, although Ned and Mandy weren't slow in following her.

They found the officers in the kitchen, which was the first room in the house, with a handcuffed man sitting in a chair and looking determined not to talk. He started a little when he saw Mandy enter the room.

Mandy shook her head at him. "What do you think you're doing, Clark?"

"What's more important is, where's Bess?" George demanded bluntly.

She thought she saw a slight quiver of fear in Clark's eyes before he resolutely turned away and muttered, "I want a lawyer."

"If she's somewhere in the house, we can find her," Ned told her. "Let's go."

George needed no more urging, especially after she saw the glimmer of worry that reflected in Clark's features. With the help of most of the officers and Mandy, who didn't even fully understand what was going on, they began practically turning the house over.

Ned and George headed to the basement first, since that was where Hadley had said she had been held. It was unfinished and appeared to be a single, mostly empty room, lined with shelves.

"Bess, where are you?" George called in desperation. There was a beat of silence, and then George thought she heard a thumping from behind the wall. "Ned, I think there's a door hidden behind one of these shelves." She started straining at the one nearest to where the sounds seemed to come.

Ned joined her, and together they were able to pull the shelf out a couple of feet. George peered behind it to see a door there. Without waiting to pull the shelf out any more, she squeezed behind it and pushed the door, which fortunately opened in the other direction, open.

The room beyond was dark, but in the feeble beam of light from the main room in the basement, George could just make out the shape of someone lying on the floor.

"Bess!"

NDNDNDNDND

Burt hung up the phone from talking with George just as the party reached the cemetery. He pulled the collar of his jacket up over his nose and shivered. "What kind of people would use a cemetery for a meeting place?"

"The kind who are interested in ghosts," Nancy replied as she looked around her. The cemetery was eerie with the snow-covered headstones. "There was the picture of the headstone in Liam's room, to begin with, and 'J.D.' from his notes could stand for 'Jack Delance'. Jack, the kid Ned and I met earlier, told me that Jack Delance is buried in the cemetery, contrary to the legends."

"Okay, but how do we find his grave?" Officer Montoya asked. "The cemetery's fairly big, and it's still dark out. If we all look around with flashlights, we're bound to alert anyone who's approaching that we're here."

Nancy thought about this for a few moments. "It would be in an older section of the cemetery, one that isn't visited very often. With all the attention that the legend has been getting lately, if anyone would have noticed Jack's grave, they would have talked about it."

"Let's try in the back part, then," Officer Hendrix suggested. "I don't think anyone's been buried back there for more than fifty years."

The group headed toward the back section of the cemetery. The headstones there were mostly the old-fashioned kind that stood up well above the ground, and many of them were leaning, looking sad and abandoned in the snow. The searchers shone their flashlights on each one in turn, watching for one that bore Jack Delance's name.

Finally, Dave called the others over. His light was shining on a short and utterly unimpressive stone that read, "Jack Delance, 1852-1867".

"This must be it," he said. "Now what do we do? Just wait for someone to show up?"

Officer Montoya checked the time on her watch and shook her head. "It's past five by now. If there was going to be a meeting here, it would have started by now. It looks like we guessed wrong."

"Then let's go see if they've found Bess," Dave suggested.

Nancy cast a glance at him. She was disappointed that her guess had been wrong, but since she was, there didn't seem to be any way of catching Liam tonight. She was about to agree with Dave when she heard a sound behind her.

She turned and froze for a moment when she saw a bluish light standing only a few feet away in the rough outline of a person.